Ashes to Ashes : Inside his Head
by Secret Weapon
Summary: Companion to Ashes to Ashes. Turned back to what he was before he was Voldemort. Before he had lost all trace of his innocence. But just how innocent is Tom Marvolo Riddle? Take a peek inside his head.
1. Inside My Head

_Disclaimers: _None of this is mine. Except the plot… methinks.

_Authors Notes: _This is a companion to **Ashes to Ashes**. It consists of various snippets, some short and some long, in Tom's POV (both first and third person) before, during and after events in the original story. No slash in this one, I'm afraid.

_Summary: _Companion to Ashes to Ashes. Turned back to what he was before he was Voldemort. Before he had lost all trace of his innocence. But just how innocent is Tom Marvolo Riddle? Take a peek inside his head.

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**_Ashes to Ashes:_**

**_Inside his head._**

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_"Whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful - it all makes sense doesn't it? Inside your head? You never meet someone who thinks they're a bad person."_

_ **– The Talented Mr Ripley**_

I do not believe in love.

I've never known what love is, so I don't understand it. I know hate - hate is an old friend of mine - sometimes I don't know what I would do without it. For it is my driving force - it keeps me going when nothing else will. I understand hate only too well. Hate and passion and fury. Those are all real. But love? It is nothing but a thing of fairy tales and cheap paperback romances. I have certainly never loved anyone and no-one has ever loved me. But, perhaps that isn't quite true. My mother loved me, didn't she? When I was younger I liked to think so but of late I'm not quite sure. She didn't really know me - she simply gave birth to me, named me after the other two men that she loved and then died.

Sometimes I hate her for dying. I hate her for leaving me behind to repay her sins. If she loved me she wouldn't have died. If she loved me she would have at least given me a name of my own instead of naming me after them. It's as if she were wishing a part of them into me. If she loved me she would have let me be my own man. If she loved me she would have taken me with her.

I do not wish for death. I can't for I fear it more than anything. I fear it with a paralysing, haunting fear that most people never know not even in their most blood curdling nightmares. But sometimes I do wish that I had never been born. My mother loved me enough to bear me and to give me life but she has hurt me unbearably by doing so. She has damned me to life and has herself sought a merciful escape and for this I hate her.

I hate her for loving a Muggle. My mother loved my father and he hurt her. She loved me and I killed her while I was coming out of her. Love is a deadly thing. If you love people they hurt you. If you love people they kill you.

I suppose for a thing that doesn't exist love is a very dangerous thing. Caelestis Malfoy, my best - well, perhaps not my best friend, but my closest confidante once said that Love is nothing but a figment of the imagination whose sole purpose is to justify the selfishness and pettiness of man.

"After all it's much nicer to say that you're going to kill your rival for the love of a noble woman rather than say that you want her for yourself and can't stand the punk and want him dead because you're a selfish pig."

I couldn't have put it better myself. But I never intend to do anything for love or even excuse my actions with it. As far as I am concerned I want nothing to do with love.

I honestly don't think that such a thing exists. At least not among the kind that I am forced to live with. They are not capable of it.

But then again, how can they be, when it doesn't exist in the first place?

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At first he had thought that the fault lay within himself. That he was unlovable because of what he was. He believed them when they told him that he was cursed and damned and a creature of darkness. He didn't want to be different. No child ever does. But the fact remained that he _was. _He wasn't like the other children. There had always been a strange unearthly air about him - something that wasn't quite right, that wasn't quite normal - wasn't quite _human._

He hadn't asked to have unnaturally bright, green eyes that unnerved all those around him. He hadn't asked for the aura of mysterious, eerie power that seemed to hang around him - in truth it was quite macabre. He hadn't asked for the power itself - the strange sinister power that he knew he possessed - dormant beneath his skin but unmistakably there.

It hadn't helped that things always seemed to happen around him. When he was angry or scared or upset. And at the orphanage he was almost always angry or scared or upset. As he grew the anger increased and the fear and sadness were soon forgotten.

Anger at them for mistreating him simply because he was different and anger at himself for being different. He was always hurting and always angry and when he was angry things happened.

Windows would break, furniture would hurl itself at whoever it was that his anger was directed, or the victim themselves would kneel over with pain.

He soon realized that if he could make things happen without meaning to then perhaps he could make things happen when he tried. But like the rest of his life nothing ever happen when he wanted it to. But he was sure that he would be able to if he just pushed hard enough. Maybe he could harness his hate and anger and channel it to his use. It never worked except unintentionally, but he never stopped trying. He couldn't stop being different but if he could manage to use his "powers" as he liked to call them when he wanted to maybe he could enjoy being different for once. He knew that he would succeed, if given time.

He had time. He had all the time in the world. He would make them pay.

His time would come.

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_Authors Post Notes: _Thank you to everyone who reviewed and recced **Ashes to Ashes. **If you like **Inside His Head **(or disliked… I'm open to constructive criticism) please review. Updates every week… or earlier if I feel like it. Also this is all un-beta'ed so please bear with me. Any takers?


	2. 1937

_Disclaimers: _None of this is mine. Except the plot… methinks.

_Authors Notes: _This is a companion to **Ashes to Ashes**. It consists of various snippets, some short and some long, in Tom's POV (both first and third person) before, during and after events in the original story. No slash in this one, I'm afraid.

_Summary: _Companion to Ashes to Ashes. Turned back to what he was before he was Voldemort. Before he had lost all trace of his innocence. But just how innocent is Tom Marvolo Riddle? Take a peek inside his head.

**__**

**__**

**_Ashes to Ashes:_**

**_Inside his head._**

**1937**

A few weeks after I turned ten I had been walking by the river with the rest of the orphanage - the warden would periodically decide that we needed more exercise and take us out for supervised walks. Almost as soon as I stepped out I thought that I could hear whispers. Whispers that were soft and secret and not meant for human ears.

_"It has started. It is he."_

_"The house of the Snake shall rise again."_

_"He is the one heir."_

I didn't understand these whispers, nor could I tell where they were coming from - but something told me that these invisible whispers were about me and that thought both thrilled me and scared me at the same time.

That night I dreamt of a large black snake that was several feet long. As it was a dream - for I knew that it was a dream - I wasn't surprised that I felt no fear when I saw the snake. Something told me that she - I knew that it was a she just as I inexplicably knew that she was extremely old - would not harm me or let me come to harm.

"Who are you?" I asked her. "What do you want of me?"

_"It is not what we want of you but what you want of us."_

Again I felt no surprise that I could talk to this snake.

_"I have been waiting," _she said. _"Waiting for so long. So very long. I had almost begun to think that it would not come to pass and it were all a lie. But here you are and we are not deceived."_

"Waiting?" I asked. "For me?"

She nodded her black head and slithered over to me until she was so close that I could feel her breath. She flickered her forked tongue over my face - some sort of serpentine caress. And again I felt no fear or revulsion that one might expect.

_"For you. For you we have been waiting. For over ten hundred years we have been waiting. He promised us that you would come, you see. You have much work to do."_

I blinked at her, unable to comprehend a word that she had said. Nothing made sense but then nothing about me ever did make sense.

"What?" I asked. "Who promised you? What work is it that I must do?"

She tapped the tip of her tail to my lips. _"Soon," _she hissed. _"Soon you will know all. Wait for us."_

And then I woke.

The first rays of the dawn were filtering in through the small windows. No-one else was awake and I lay there unwilling to move - lest I break the enchantment the dream had seemed to cast over me.

I knew somehow that something extraordinary was going to happen and that there was something very special about me. The snake had told me to wait and wait I would with ever increasing impatience. For what I had been told to wait for I was not sure but I knew that when the time did come my life would never be the same.

Nine months later an owl flew in through the window during breakfast.

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At first they thought that he had staged some sort of elaborate joke and locked him in the cupboard under the stairs. That was where they would send him whenever they thought that he had been 'wicked' to think about what he had done.

When he was very young he was afraid of the cupboard and would cry and plead to be let out. But that was a long time ago and he didn't mind the cupboard any more. In fact he almost preferred it to the taunts and punches of the other boys. He had never fit in with them and he didn't really want to. They were crude, savage creatures of sticks and stones. He was of fire and silk and of the darkness. He was above their childish brawling and rudimentary games and was of an older much superior line than they were. He knew this just as he knew now, that the time that the black snake in his dreams had spoken of had come.

Everything suddenly made sense. His life until now had been nothing but a lie.

He was a wizard. A sorcerer. And he was to go to Hogwarts school of Wizardry and Witchcraft.

He smiled to himself silently. His time had come indeed.


	3. 1938

_Disclaimers: _None of this is mine. Except the plot… methinks.

_Authors Notes: _This is a companion to **Ashes to Ashes**. It consists of various snippets, some short and some long, in Tom's POV (both first and third person) before, during and after events in the original story. No slash in this one, I'm afraid.

_Summary: _Companion to Ashes to Ashes. Turned back to what he was before he was Voldemort. Before he had lost all trace of his innocence. But just how innocent is Tom Marvolo Riddle? Take a peek inside his head.

**__**

**__**

**_Ashes to Ashes:_**

**_Inside his head._**

**1938**

A tall man with long auburn hair and a long beard of the same colour came the next day to explain to the orphanage people that I was a wizard and that I would have to go to Hogwarts. The man who said that his name was Professor Albus Dumbledore then said that he would be taking me to get my school supplies.

I followed the man outside eagerly wanting to ask him a hundred questions… and than I heard the same soft whispers that I had that day at the river.

_"What does the Lion want with the heir of the Serpent?"_

_"No good shall come of this."_

_"We have waited too long to be deprived now, he must be dealt with."_

_"No… we will wait a while longer. The Lion will soon pay for his past treachery and the Raven and the Badger with him."_

_"When? When shall that be?"_

_"Soon. Very Soon. Soon we will act; but for now we wait."_

I stopped in my tracks and looked wildly around for theses phantom whispers. Albus Dumbledore asked me what the matter was and I shook my head. For some reason the owners of the voices were not happy that this man had come to collect me. And it was obvious that the man hadn't heard what I had. I suddenly felt very disappointed. My new found status of wizard hood was barely two hours old and already I was different here as well. But I knew that I could not trust Albus Dumbledore.

The man was staring at me with bright blue unnerving eyes and it was as though he was looking straight into my heart and mind to see what was hidden there. I looked away uneasily and assured him that nothing was wrong and that I was just overwhelmed by the life altering events that had just transpired over the past few days.

Dumbledore smiled at me and told me that I would be even more overwhelmed before the day was done and then had asked me to hold onto a red and gold striped sock with him.

I thought it a very unusual request but had complied and the next thing I knew I felt a tug somewhere around my navel and we was suddenly spinning off into dizzying spiral.

After a few seconds I realised that that I was on solid ground again and was in the middle of a busy street full of people wearing long robes and pointed hats.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley," said Dumbledore.

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The train journey was pleasant and the trip across the lake was… wet and the Sorting was creepy to say the least. I didn't like the feeling that something was looking into my head although I was intrigued with the possibility of looking at other people's thoughts. You never know what you might find there.

The Hat chuckled to itself. "Well, well," it said more to itself than to me. "Very interesting."

"Just get on with it," I thought.

"Touchy, aren't we?" it said. "SLYTHERIN!" with a cry that almost deafened me. I scowled at it and made my way to the Slytherin table amid the cursory applause.

The gaunt house specter the Bloody Baron floated up to me during the feast, later, to get a closer look.

"So you have returned," the Baron said.

I stared. "What? How do you mean returned?"

The Baron looked me up and down. "So that is how it is," he said to himself and then louder. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Young Slytherin."

The Baron floated off and I was left feeling numb and confused.

That night before I slept I found myself thinking of the black snake of my dreams. "Please do not make me wait much longer," I whispered.

Caelestis Malfoy, the boy who would later become my best – my closest confidant, stuck his head through the curtains. "Did you hear hissing?"

I shook my head. "Hissing?"

"Like a snake. It came from this direction."

I shook my head again, annoyed. I don't like my personal space being intruded upon. I supposed I ought to have got used to it - living at the orphanage for so many years but I hadn't. "I don't have a snake here. You must have imagined it. Goodnight Malfoy."

The blonde boy obviously knew a hint when he heard one and scowled fiercely but retreated nonetheless.

I found that I couldn't sleep for a very long time. The events of the day and those before it kept going round and round in my mind.

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He did not dream of the snake that night but two months later on the date of his birth when the castle had been bedecked in pumpkins and after the feast of All Hallows Eve he found that sleep, once again, evaded him.

Eventually sleep came to him in the early hours of the morning. He saw the black snake again and she looked at him rather sadly.

_"You are he who was promised, 'tis true, but you are weaker than we had hoped."_

He could feel anger stab at him. Hot and sharp instead of the cold fury that he was used to.

"Why do you say that I am weak?" he asked.

_"Your blood," _she said. _"The weakness of your father flows through your veins."_

"My father?" What had his father got to do with anything? "My father is …"

_"A vile creature. Dirty, filthy blood with not a drop of magic."_

"He was a Muggle."

_"**Is** child. Your father is a Muggle. He lives on."_

He was stunned. This was the first that he had heard of it. If his father was alive they why had he been living in the orphanage for all his life? He turned to the snake and could have sworn that she was smiling mockingly at him.

_"Your mother was weak too, poor foolish creature. She set her heart on one so much below her and when he found out what she was he sent her away. Even with you still in her womb. For he wished that you were dead before you were born."_

His mouth had gone very dry even though it were nothing but a dream and his heart was pounding and no matter how different or special or capable of greatness he was he still felt as wretched as an eleven year old can feel when told that his supposedly dead father was still alive and wished for him to be dead.

_"'Tis an ill omen. To wish a babe death afore it has life. And the weakness is there."_

"I am not weak!" he said coldly. "I am not my father!"

She seemed pleased. _"You have spirit… and strength. You are true even though your blood lacks."_

"Who am I?" he asked, still cold, still angry but with an effort to be polite. It would not do to anger this snake.

_"You are the one who speaks. The one true heir."_

He frowned. The one who speaks. Speaks what? But wait… she is a snake so if he speaks to her then -

**_"Did you hear hissing?… Like a snake… " _**

"I'm a parselmouth," he said remembering something he read from one of the books he bought from Diagon Alley. It made sense. That's why he could hear soft whispers that no-one else could. They were snakes talking not people. It all made perfect sense now and he wondered why it had taken him so long to realize it.

He thought back on everything that had happened over the past months.

**_"The house of the Snake shall rise again." _**

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**_"What does the Lion want with the heir of the Serpent?" _**

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**_"Welcome to Hogwarts, Young Slytherin."_**

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He swallowed. "I'm Slytherins' heir?"

She bared her fangs at him into a terrible parody of a grin. _"You are sharp, young one. You shall do well. You have much work to do."_

She had said that to him the first time he had dreamt of her.

"What work is it that I must do?" he asked only this time there was none of the childish awe and wonder with which he had first held her in.

_"'Tis your duty to fulfill the noble work of Slytherin. The Chamber must be opened and the castle purged of the filth that occupies it."_

He had read of the Chamber of Secrets. He scowled. "You want me to unleash a monster and kill all the Muggleborn? Why should I?"

She thrashed her tail angrily. _"Foolish creature, like your mother before you. She was strong but not strong enough. Her will was weak. And for that your father as good as killed her. He would have killed you too given half the chance. All Muggles are like that - afraid and vengeful of what they cannot have. Have you ever met a Muggle who did not try to crush you? Have you ever met a Muggle who did not belittle you for what you should be __honoured__ for?"_

He thought of the taunts and the jeers and the punches and punishments. He thought of the cupboard under the stairs and the cellar. He thought of the humiliation and the degradation and how much he wanted to show them how much he hated them all. The pain of knowing that his father was another one of these creatures was still fresh in his mind and he was filled with a cold rage that chilled his blood and bones to the very core. He was more used to this sort of anger but this was so intense and severe that he could barely breathe.

The snake was watching him intently.

_"The Muggleborn are just as bad. They bring more filth with them. They bring the Muggles closer and closer to your world and soon they shall try to destroy your kind. You are aware of what they are. How can you doubt?"_

The more he thought about it the more it made sense.


	4. 1942

_Disclaimers: _None of this is mine. Except the plot… methinks.

_Authors Notes: _This is a companion to **Ashes to Ashes**. It consists of various snippets, some short and some long, in Tom's POV (both first and third person) before, during and after events in the original story. No slash in this one, I'm afraid.

_Summary: _Companion to Ashes to Ashes. Turned back to what he was before he was Voldemort. Before he had lost all trace of his innocence. But just how innocent is Tom Marvolo Riddle? Take a peek inside his head.

**__**

**__**

**_Ashes to Ashes:_**

**_Inside his head._**

**1942**

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"Let go of me!" he screamed threateningly at them. "Let me go or you'll be sorry."

An empty threat. There wasn't anything that he could do unless he wanted to be expelled from Hogwarts and that was the one thing that preserved his sanity. He didn't know what he would do if his wand was snapped in two and he was thrown out. His magic now came as natural to him as breathing and he had no doubt that if magic was forbidden to him he would curl up and die very much like if were forbidden to breath. They knew this as well as he and did not pause in their approach.

They laughed cruelly mocking him knowing that he was powerless against so many of them. He backed off until he felt the wall behind him and there was nowhere else to go.

He saw the fist coming at him before it connected with his jaw. His head exploded with pain as it struck the wall causing him to groan and stagger - his mouth full of blood. His attacker moved in close slamming an arm very near to his face and pulled him up by his collar with the other.

"Thought you were gonna make me sorry, freak. Well come on. What are you waiting for?"

He waited until the other was close enough for him to feel his breath on his face steeling himself not to react to the jeers and taunts of the other boys. He then smacked his forehead across the others with a resounding crack and at the same time kneed the other in the groin - putting as much force into the impact as possible.

The larger boy howled in pain and let him go dropping to the floor clutching at his injured appendages. The others stopped laughing at him and glared at him menacingly.

He didn't have time to think before they pounced. Their fists pummelling everywhere that they could reach. He fought back the best he could at first but soon he concentrated on trying to avoid their blows instead of inflicting any.

His arms shielding his face he tried his best not to cry out. He concentrated on his hatred instead. Concentrated on how he was going to make them pay. Promising them silently a world of pain and suffering. His mind thinking of cruel tortures each one more sadistic than other he promised them that one day they would beg for death and smiled to himself - and a horrible, mirthless smile it was - as he thought how he would delight in their screams.

Power surged through him and the next thing that he knew an invisible force had flung his assailants off him. He knew that he had lost control momentarily and that he could expect a Ministry caution very soon. Now, however, was not the time to dwell on that. The other boys were already picking themselves up and were glaring at him with murder in their eyes.

He jumped to his feet feeling sore in a hundred different places and ran.

He felt like an absolute coward as he wrenched the door open and bolted as fast as he could.

He clattered down the stairs and out into the streets. Darted into an abandoned alleyway and then sank to the ground unmindful of the grime and dirt as he heard them crashing past in hot pursuit.

At times like these he hated his Muggle father more than ever for abandoning him and leaving him at the hands of these foul creatures who revelled in his suffering. He hated his father for his Muggle prejudices. For casting out his mother. For the weakness and filth of his blood; the blood that now flowed through his veins. There were times when he almost felt like cutting himself and to let the impurities ebb away along with his life. But then he could never do that - for he feared death too much.

He would kill his father though. He liked to think about how he would do it. He was sure that he would enjoy it probably more than he would even enjoy disposing of the worthless Muggles that tormented him. He had never hated anyone more than the absent father whom he had never met. The man who had given him his name. He hated that as well. He would change it as soon as he thought of something else. A name worthy of the bloodline of his mother's side. A name befitting the heir of Slytherin. A name that Wizards and Muggles would fear to speak alike when he became the greatest sorcerer in the world.

Well it would all begin this year.

He now was very close to knowing where the Chamber lay deep within the caverns that lay below the school and he knew the deadly secret that it held. The Baron had been most helpful where that had been concerned and he dreamt often of the black snake.

He laughed. Cruel and cold and high pitched. A laugh that no boy should have had. This year - his fifteenth - the Chamber of Secrets would be opened and the school would start to be purged from all those unworthy of learning Magic.

Enemies of the heir, beware!

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